Dead Man's Drop
by ghostesez
Summary: Even prior to Phantom and the near-daily sightings of ghosts, Amity Park was well known for being a paranormal hot spot. Three young teenagers can attest to that.


**A/N: This story is set prior to the start of the series, in the 1980's. It is entirely compromised of original characters, fair warning. This is something that I can see happening in Amity Park, and nothing in this story conflicts with canon. It doesn't really contribute to canon either, it's just a side story.**

**I teetered between rating this T or M as it has some mature themes, but there's nothing here that would be too much for a teen so that's what I decided to rate it. Not labeled as slash since it's not integral to the story.**

**Quick warnings: mentions of car crashes and minor character deaths. Let me know if you find any typos so that I can fix them. Thanks!**

* * *

Travis whistled as he approached, smacking the shiny, new car on the hood as he approached. "Nice ride, man! Finally talk your parents into getting you an engagement present?"

"Yeah, dude!" Joshua laughed, pulling Patty closer. Her curly, blonde hair bobbed as she giggled. "I got the girl and now I got the car. Brand new '85 Toyota MR2. She's straight from Japan. Never driven before yesterday."

Grace and Lily exchanged glances. "Rich kids," they said in unison, laughing. Grace stole a glance at the car. It was a shiny, candy apple red. A duo of black pinstripes ran along the hood and surely continued to the roof and down to the trunk. The passenger door stood open, allowing for the sounds of the radio to spill out into the parking lot. It was early afternoon, the parking lot of the high school slowly emptying out as everyone headed home for the evening.

Travis shook his head, smiling. "You must be the luckiest senior in the whole school, congrats man." Travis grabbed at his friend, yanking Joshua to the side and began whispering in his ear. Patty, dismayed at her fiancé having been stolen from her, walked to her friends.

"He's so happy, girls, you should've seen him this morning," Patty said.

"Oh, I see him plenty now," Grace remarked. "Does he love the car more than you now?"

"Maybe…" Patty smirked. "I give it a week before the newness wears off and he'll be back to flipping through those magazines in search of a new one." She turned to look behind her as Joshua approached, the chains on her skirt dinging slightly as she moved.

"Babe, I have the perfect night planned. Let's go to a movie, have a nice dinner, and go on a drive." Joshua was beaming and wore a mischievous grin on his face. He tugged at his red and white letterman's jacket, running a hand through his blond hair. His too-clean jeans betrayed the practice that he was surely missing that afternoon by showing off the car to his friends.

"Sure, hon." Patty glanced back at her friends, "We still on for the mall tomorrow?"

"Absolutely," Lily said.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Grace replied. "Meet us by the fountain at noon."

Patty smiled at her friend and allowed Joshua to take her in his arms, guiding her to the car. They got in and sped off, Patty waving back as they drove out of the lot.

* * *

Patty sat with her head on the inside window, allowing the cool glass to rest against her cheek. She was content, Joshua humming along to a Led Zeppelin song on the radio. The light in front of them flicked from red to green and they gently accelerated. Patty took in the scenery of the town she was so familiar with. They passed the Town Hall. A few blocks down, a new fast food joint under construction, a sign that read 'The Tasty Burger' halfway through installation. A series of town houses, a handful of brownstones.

The sun began to set in earnest as they reached the outskirt of the city, where Amity Park turned to woods. The twists and turns up here were not familiar to Patty, being a city girl at heart, but Joshua seemed to have a route in mind, so she said nothing. As Pink Floyd turned to static, Patty shut the radio off and turned to Joshua, "Where are we going?"

"Travis mentioned a lookout spot up here somewhere. It's supposed to show all of Amity Park," Joshua replied. He turned the high beams on, illuminating the road and trees alike. "He said there's some drop off out here to watch out for, but apparently it's on the other side of the mountain."

Patty sat up straighter as she felt the car accelerating. "Babe, be careful."

"I will!" Joshua laughed as he sped up. "I've got this. I'm just having fun."

Trees began to speed past the windows that Patty was looking out of, the road blurring in front of her. As Joshua sped up the car, signs began to whizz past faster than she could read them. Her eyes widened as a quick glance at one that was red caused her to whip her head to look at the speedometer. 87 M.P.H. A series of orange signs appeared in front of them, arrows blazoned across them in the direction of the road as it veered right. "Joshua!" She screamed. The car barely slowed down as it continued straight.

* * *

It was a dark and foggy night. Three teenagers stood between orange signs with arrows as they stared down into the ravine. One held a flashlight and shined it into the ravine some thirty feet down. Grace shivered as she took in the scene before her. At least a dozen cars all sat down at the bottom, some more gnarled than others. Some old, some fairly new. One red 1985 Toyota MR2. The car was smashed, having landed on its roof after its short sail into the ravine. The car had been overturned back onto its wheels when the emergency personnel came. The front was facing towards them, glass shattered and stained with red. Grace looked toward her brother, "Can we go now?"

Travis shook his head, "It's important to come to terms with this. I know Patty was your best friend, Joshua was mine, but we have to meet this head on."

"No," Grace snapped. "We don't." She nudged Lily, who stood in a yellow raincoat to her left. "You're not going down there are you?"

"Hell no," Lily replied. "Look at all those cars. Every single one had at least one person in it. No one has ever surviving driving off Dead Man's Drop. Not one. Joshua should have known better."

Travis winced, his voice reaching a high pitch, "I warned him. I told him that the drop was on the south side of the mountain."

Grace's brows threaded together as she looked up. "Travis, this is the north side of the mountain."

"They just left the cars there?" Lily asked.

"They can't really move them, so they siphon the gas out to prevent explosions and leave them to rot," Travis said, deliberately ignoring his sister's comment.

"Why is there no guardrail here? You'd think they would have had one installed after the first car went over the edge."

"No point. Anyone going fast enough to not make that turn would plow right through a rail." He shone the light down the road as it veered to the right. The trees twisted over the road, creating an eerie tunnel of branches and leaves as far as the flashlight illuminated. "It's not a very sharp turn." He paused for a long while as the three teenagers continued their macabre stare. "I'm going down."

"What?" Lily pipped up. "Sweetie, no. You might get stuck down there. Also, it's cordoned off." She waved her gloved hand down toward the police caution tape that surrounded the cars. In front of them, the tape was tied between two makeshift wooden poles, denoting that no one is to pass off the road into the ravine below. Its placement gave a feeling of a spiderweb to Grace, who looked down in sorrow, hoping that a web had been there to catch her friends as they flew off the road not yet three weeks prior.

Grace was stirred from her sorrow as her brother ducked under the tape and began sliding down the hill. "Travis!" She hissed. She rushed to the tape and looked down at him, standing at the bottom and brushing dirt off his pant leg. "Travis Wyatt! Get your ass up here! We need to go home before mom finds out we're up here!" Next to her, Lily began to shiver.

"Grow up, sis." Travis turned and began walking near the car.

Lily yelped as a car passed them turning down the tree-tunnel. "Hold up, babe, I'm coming!" And she, too, slipped under the tape and began to slide down the embankment.

"Grace! Get down here, you pansy!"

Grace rolled her eyes, slipped under the tape and began a slow descent down the hill. At the bottom, she stood and brushed at the dirt around her ankles. Travis and Lily stood beside the MR2, the light illuminating the passenger's seat. As she approached, Grace began to heave. She turned away. Red. So much red. Darker than the scratched, red paint of the car. A dry, crusty red that stained the seat. "I'm leaving. You two can do as you please. I'll be in the car."

_Creeeeak…_

"Uh, P-p-patty?" Travis stammered. Grace whirled around to see a misty form appear in the passenger's seat. A young woman with curly blonde hair and a black leather jacket. Under, she wore a Rolling Stones shirt. Behind the dashboard, Grace could barely make out a chained, leather skirt. The misty woman's neck was bent at an odd angle and a single drop of blood hung at the corner of her mouth.

All four of them screamed.

* * *

Grace sat in the chapel the next afternoon, shaking uncontrollably. Beside her, Travis sat motionless. Their parents either neglected to notice or simply guessed that their uneasiness was due to the circumstances. Grace could not see her, but she knew that Lily was across the aisle, two rows down. Nearly the whole school had appeared for the funeral. Every pew was full and many people still stood in the back. Up front, the preacher continued, "In these tragic times, it is important to remember the good in the world." He paused, "What about love? Love is a good in this world and these two had plenty of it. Mister Joshua Jacob Baxter and Miss Patricia Anne Jameson has quite a lot of it. They were special people with special friends and special families."

Grace looked up as the preacher droned on. Two closed coffins sat motionless at the front of the chapel. A misty, young woman in black clothes and curly, blonde hair stood over the coffins, hands gently placed on the both of them. No one acknowledged her presence. Grace glanced at her brother. Travis was dead-set staring at the space in between the coffins. He could see her too. Grace looked down at her shoes.

Later in the cemetery, Grace stood above the grave of her friend. To her right, another headstone was being installed. A single tear fell down her cheek as a misty hand touched her shoulder. She started and turned to see Lily reaching to her. Lily croaked, "You saw her too."

"I've _been_ seeing her, Lily. Everywhere. At school. At the market. She's haunting us," Grace replied.

"Well, Amity always has been known for ghosts. Those old buildings downtown? That film crew left a few days ago. I guess they got activity on camera." Lily shrugged, "Too bad that nothing can be done about it."

"Yes," Grace agreed. "It's unfortunate."

Grace flicked open her eyes at the sound of a creak. Her room was dark, her curtains dancing gently in the breeze. Another creak. She shot up, nearly colliding with the misty figure that sat at the end of her bed. It turned its broken neck and raised a hand to Grace, spectral blood falling from its arm, only to turn to dust upon hitting the blanket. Grace gritted her teeth, "What do you want, Patty?! You're dead! Leave me alone!"

"H-h-h-elp…" The ghost said, her voice airy and lacking depth. "Help. Please. It h-h-hurts."

Without another word, the figure vanished. Fired burned behind her eyes as Grace threw the blankets off her bed and stomped to her wardrobe. She pulled on a pair of old hiking boots and a parka over her night gown. She stole a glance at the clock as she descended the stairs, grabbing the keys to the family car from where they hung by the door. 11:14 P.M.

Outside, she grabbed three empty gasoline cans and unceremoniously tossed them into the trunk along with a pack of matches. She slid into the car, adjusting the rearview mirror. A pair of bloodshot eyes stared back at her and she reversed out of the driveway. By the time that Grace arrived at the gas station, the eyes had disappeared. Grace pulled the cans out of the trunk and one-by-one filled them at the pump. Back on the road heading into the mountain, Grace was relieved to not see eyes staring back at her.

After some time on the twists and turns of a mountain highway, Grace pulled gingerly into a small alcove on the side of the road and sat there, hands on the wheel, engine idling, staring at the orange signs in front of her. Grace looked at the clock. Three minutes to midnight. She turned off the car, stepped out, and grabbed the cans and matchbook. Once all three cans were at the bottom, Grace stopped and looked around, taking in her surroundings.

A black Ford Model T, a man standing in a bloody suit and top hat. A purple Ruxton Roadster, a dainty girl sitting, leg angled oddly, in a flapper dress and smoking a long cigarette. A blue Chevrolet Corvette, a family of three staring at her from behind hollow eyes. A red Toyota MR2, Patty and Joshua smiling, hopeful. Many other cars and ghosts that Grace could not place sat empty and alone in the ravine. Grace tightened her grip on the can that she held and grimaced. Tears began to flow in earnest as she unscrewed the cap on the can.

She began. A splash here. A splash there. A few drops on the seat of this one, a few in the trunk of that one. The ghosts moved out of her way, parting as she continued. Not one made a noise, not one attempted to stop her. At last, her third can was empty. Grace tossed it aside and reached into her coat, retrieving the pack of matches that had been within. She opened it, removed a match and struck it alight. Grace stared at it long enough for the fire to lose her focus as she stared into the misty eyes of her best friend and tossed the match into the MR2 beside her.

The flames were instantaneous. The car began to burn as Grace quickly lit and tossed more matches into the cars that sat in the ravine. Satisfied, Grace climbed the hill and sat at the edge of the road. She was not sure at what point most of the figures vanished, but they did. She was also not sure at what point the local authorities would be alerted to the massive fire in the woods, but they were. In the distance, sirens. In the ravine, smiles as the last figure, a girl in punk clothes with curly blonde hair waved goodbye.

* * *

**A/N: I did historical car research for you guys, I hope you're happy.**


End file.
